Friday, October 31, 2014

Happy Halloween, everyone! And it’s Friday, too!

From Cassandra: You may have heard about spooky clowns running around in California. But have you heard that spooky clowns are running around in France, too? 

Also from Cassandra: Case notes from a Victorian-era lunatic asylum. Wow.

Also also from Cassandra: Heidegger and technology. It’s complicated, unsurprisingly.

From Bunny: Cats who live in comic book stores. Our personal favorite, Mr. Eko, is featured! (I highly recommend everyone visit Mr. Eko if at all possible. We hung out with him just last week.)

Also from Bunny: 13 horror hosts you should know. Meet Cleaver Theatre is among them! (MCT is considering getting the band back together. Maybe. Possibly. Watch this space.)

The BBC radio production of An American Werewolf in London is available for the listening! Here’s Part 1, and here’s Part 2.

And finally, here is Omaha’s celebration of Halloween in 2006. Muahahaha. Happy weekend, everyone!


Thursday, October 30, 2014

Hello! Running a little late today, so this is short but substantial.

First, Rejected Princesses provides you with lots of history, lots of great art, and some idols for little girls. (Well, maybe not Ranavalona. But lots of others.)

 And second, a real-life ghost story from West Virginia.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

It’s the spookiest time of the year, hooray!

 Dave Lowe has some great prop ideas for your Halloween decorating.

Pinterest has a whole board dedicated to spooky décor. 

Important facts for those of us giving out the candy: here’s which wine goes well with each treat.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Today’s Google Doodle honors Dr. Jonas Salk on what would have been his 100th birthday. It’s lovely.

I am intrigued by the Near Future Laboratory’s plans and machinations!

Steampunk’s not dead, but is, instead, expanding. LIKE SPACE.

The Eye Catcher analyzes your emotions and reacts to them. It's a little creepy, but...eye-catching. And possibly soul-stealing. I’m not sure yet.

Monday, October 27, 2014

We’re back! We had a lovely time away from most of the world. Now we’re back, and fortunately, we have links from others while we get re-settled into the groove.

Cassandra has lots of stuff to share:

 - Spooky biology! 

- What does multitasking do to the brain? 

 - How does culture affect disease? 

 - Sensory deprivation! 

 - And, possibly most importantly, here’s what color next year’s CFRs will be! 

From Holly:

- Steam Wars: the LEGO results are in!

Friday, October 10, 2014

It’s Friday! And it’s the beginning of a vacation for the Spooky Librarians, who are going to focus on being spooky away from the computer for several days. We’ll be back soon!

From Zazoo: “Poor Morrissey. This time, it sounds like his life is melodramatically bad for real.

From Cassandra: Protecting those with albinism in Tanzania, rediscovering the women who were among the first computer programmers, and studying the hallucinations astronauts experienced in space. 

Discovered via Metafilter: Stayed Up All Night, which lets you create mixtapes online, complete with choice of cassette and labels!

And finally: My mom went to the People’s Climate March in New York City last month, and here’s some video of her talking about her experiences, along with others who went to the march. (For those of you who don’t know me in person, see if you can guess which speaker is my mom.)

Have a spiffy weekend and following week, everyone! See you soon.

Thursday, October 09, 2014

An article from the Wall Street Journal encourages adults to read slowly, “like a first grader,” to reduce stress. I’m not sure if reading like a first grader really accomplishes that, but hey.

The Kitchen Library is a library which lends out cooking utensils. Awesome!

If you’re interested in the Manhattan Project, the papers are now open to the public.

The FingerReader, developed at MIT, is a ring for blind readers. One ring to rule all the printed material! Huzzah!

Wednesday, October 08, 2014

It’s Halloween season, and Final Girl is celebrating Shocktober!

Did you know that the monsters of Universal have their own army? It’s true, and there’s much to discover.

I found Hollywood Gothique via a review of a stage production of The Call of Cthulhu, which sounds amazing.

And in more practical matters, consider the Urban Death Project!

Tuesday, October 07, 2014

I went to X-Entertainment to see their annual Halloween celebration, but horrors! The site is temporarily gone! But no fear, Dinosaur Dracula is here in its place, and celebrating October spookiness in style. Whew.

Longsword fighting is making a comeback. It’s always good to know these sorts of things. (Video, too!)

Klaus Kemp continues the endangered Victorian art of making diatoms, and there’s a short film about him titled “The Diatomist.”

Monday, October 06, 2014

It’s a grey Monday here. On to arty links!

Architecture and more: here’s what’s going on in Berlin nightlife.

TV: Twin Peaks is coming back in 2016! 

Photos: Some great photos of this year’s Gold Rush Days, which features vintage baseball being played in an old mining town in Wyoming.

Artist Anselm Kiefer lives in Barjac, in the south of France, on a property which looks like it belongs in a storybook illustration.

Friday, October 03, 2014

Happy Friday!

Mazda is giving a grant to one of four TED participants, and you can vote for which one should receive the grant. All of them are really interesting people with really interesting projects, so even if you don’t have a preference, it makes for good reading!

From Zazoo: Brooklyn’s Kings Theatre is coming back to life, and looks stunning.

From Cassandra: Marmosets are learning from video! I originally thought this said marmots instead of marmosets, and was excited to see groundhogs studying videos. But I’m all for marmosets, too.

Also from Cassandra: Charles Blow talks about childhood, abuse, poverty , sexuality, and race. Interesting discussion here.

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone! See you next week.

Thursday, October 02, 2014

Public libraries as makerspaces? Yes!

In Lisbon, a gorgeous vintage van is tooling about, offering literature to people. Meet the Tell a Story van.

Congress.gov is out of beta and is currently much more helpful than their human counterparts!

Combining a printer and a Roomba to deliver documents seems like a hilarious idea. I’m all for it.

Bill Lucey examines the correlation between beards and World Series rings. Quick, someone go shave everyone on the St. Louis Cardinals.

Wednesday, October 01, 2014

Good news, fellow brunettes: apparently the new hip hair color is “French brown.” We are so fashionable!

Google’s newest trick lets you explore the (outside of the) Pyramids of Giza from wherever you are.

A leftover from yesterday: The New York Transit Museum is having a steampunk party tomorrow! 

You may like drag queens. You may like professional wrestling, and/or lucha libre. You may like stories about the El Paso/Ciudad Juárez border. This New Yorker story has all that and more! (Seriously, this story is great. Check it out.)